Paul Friedrich August Ascherson

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Paul Ascherson (around 1900)

Paul Friedrich August Ascherson (born June 4, 1834 in Berlin ; † March 6, 1913 there ) was a German botanist , historian, ethnographer and linguist. Its official botanical author's abbreviation is “ Asch. "; earlier it was also the abbreviation “ Aschers. " in use.

Live and act

The son of the Secret Sanitary Council Ferdinand Moritz Ascherson (1798–1879) and brother of the later classical philologist and librarian Ferdinand Ascherson studied medicine at the Berlin Friedrich Wilhelms University from 1850, but became increasingly interested in botany and was in 1855 with a dissertation on the Plant geography of the Mark Brandenburg for Dr. med. PhD . In 1859 he was one of the founders of the Botanical Association of the Province of Brandenburg .

From 1860 he was assistant at the Berlin Botanical Garden , from 1865 also at the Royal Herbarium there , qualified as a professor in 1863 for special botany and plant geography, and in 1873 was appointed associate professor at Berlin University. In 1869 he was a founding member of the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory . In 1877 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina Scholars' Academy .

In 1868 he toured the Dalmatian coast and botanized in Montenegro . He was the first to climb the highest mountain in Dalmatia, the Orjen . 1873-74 he accompanied Gerhard Rohlfs on the expedition to the Libyan desert . After 1876 he carried out further expeditions to Africa and published basic works on the flora of Africa and other countries. In the 1890s Ascherson botanized among other things in the Jerichower Land and in the Vorharzgebiet together with Paul Graebner (1871-1933), with whom he also published his fundamental works on the Central European flora.

Ascherson's importance lies, among other things, in the fact that he combined existing local flora works with the inclusion of his own field observations into systematically reorganized representations of the flora of a larger area.

Ascherson was not only a botanist, but also a historian , ethnographer and linguist . The University of Rostock awarded him an honorary doctorate in philosophy . He found his final resting place in the Lichterfelde park cemetery .

Works

His main botanical work is the flora of the province of Brandenburg , published between 1859 and 1864 . On the work The Natural Plant Families by Adolf Engler and Carl Prantl , he contributed the description of the Potamogetonaceae for volume 2 number 1 (1889) . He worked on the Dictionnaire de botanique by Henri Ernest Baillon , published from 1876 ​​to 1892 . Here is a selection of his works:

  • Studiorum phytogeographicorum de Marchia Brandenburgensis specimen . Dissertation, Berlin 1855.
  • Flora of the province of Brandenburg, the Altmark and the Duchy of Magdeburg . 1864.
  • About the genus Anticharis . 1867
  • The Orjen mountain on the Bocche di Cattaro . In: Journal of the Society for Geography in Berlin. Volume 3, Berlin 1868, pp. 319-336.
  • Contribution to the flora of Dalmatia . In: Austrian botanical journal. Volume 19, 1869, pp. 65-70
  • with Paul Graebner: Synopsis of the Central European Flora . ( bibdigital.rjb.csic.es - 1896–1939; unfinished). doi: 10.5962 / bhl.title.10838 doi: 10.5962 / bhl.title.32166 doi: 10.5962 / bhl.title.35810
  • with Paul Graebner: The plant kingdom Potamogetonaceae . 1907.
  • with Paul Graebner: Flora of the northeast German lowlands (except East Prussia) . (1898-1899).
  • with Paul Graebner: Northeast German school flora. Tables to determine the wild and the more frequently grown flowering and fern plants in the provinces of Brandenburg, Pomerania, Posen, East and West Prussia, and Saxony (northern half), the Grand Duchies of Mecklenburg and the Duchy of Anhalt according to the flora of the northeast German lowlands . 1902.
  • with Augustus Kanitz: Catalogus Cormophytorum et Anthophytorum Serbiae, Bosniae, Hercegovinae, Montis Scodri, Albaniae Hucusque Cognitorum . 1877.
  • with Georg Schweinfurth : Illustration de la flore d'Egypte . 1887 (supplement 1889).
  • Author of some biographies in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (see Wikisource link)
  • Contribution in Gerhard Rohlfs : Kufra. Journey from Tripoli to the Kufra oasis, carried out on behalf of the African Society in Germany . FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1881 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive )

Taxa named after Ascherson

The plant genus Aschersonia F.Muell. ex Benth. from the family of the frog-bite family (Hydrocharitaceae) has been named in his honor and possibly also the genus Aschersoniodoxa Gilg & Muschl. from the cruciferous family (Brassicaceae).

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Paul Ascherson  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Prof. Dr. Paul Friedrich August Ascherson. Friedparks.de; Retrieved December 3, 2012.
  2. ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names . Extended Edition. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin, Free University Berlin Berlin 2018. [1]
personal data
SURNAME Ascherson, Paul Friedrich August
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ascherson, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German botanist, historian, ethnographer and linguist
DATE OF BIRTH June 4, 1834
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH March 6, 1913
Place of death Berlin